Re: ssh with diskless machines

Hi there,

Crist J. Clark writes:
>
> I should point out that there are ways to get that secret onto the

ah, interesting, but what if sshd should run before a user logs in? How about creating a dedicated user and using `su' to retrieve the key, like this prior to starting sshd:

--------------------------------------8<--------------------------------------

su keyper -c "scp <somehost>:/secret/$HOST/ssh_host_key* /etc/ssh" chown, chmod accordingly
sshd ...

--------------------------------------8<--------------------------------------

this of course assumes that user keyper may scp without a password to <somehost> and may read the host-keys there. Could be done if this user's home directory lies on an NFS share then it is not a local user and identity file and authorized_keys file are set up already.

This way the hostkeys are not accessible via NFS and are transfered over a secure channel. No secret is stored on the workstations.

How does that sound?

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again, thanks for the discussion,

       Peter

-- 
Peter Kruse 
Q-Leap Networks GmbH
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